The Last Shadow
by LordImperator
Summary: In the 7th Age of Arda, the Dagor Dagorath approaches fast. The modern world will be turned upside down as Morgoth returns to destroy it. What is going to happen at the end of all things? Rated T for violence, language, sexual references
1. Chapter 1

**July 2011**

This place was accursed. Of that the American and Russian soldiers assigned to guard this base in the Arctic Circle knew well enough. The black resonance of an unthinkable malice had lingered long here, giving an additional chill to the freezing ice winds of Novaya Zemlya.

Slowly the helicopter descended, letting Doctor Valentine out to look at the gate set in the cliff face.

To say it was immense was to put it mildly**. **The right-hand door, slightly ajar, was a 120 foot tall, 80 foot wide, 50 foot thick monolith of grey-carven granite - exceedingly primitive in construction but still unyielding to the elements. The left hand one, which was long collapsed, had left a massive pile of rubble fragments behind, almost totally blocking the way in.

The remaining door had a carving on it. A human figure was smashing down a massive stone pillar, whose pinnacle was giving off light, with his bare hands. Below figure and monolith a catastrophe of some sort was destroying a verdant, unspoiled natural landscape in what looked like fires, floods, and titanic earthquakes. Somehow, Valentine realised dimly that the image was _celebrating_ this disaster, and recoiled at the sickening thought.

He was shaken from his reverie by a warmly extended hand.

"Captain Ivanov, commander of this base in service to the United Nations," the Russian heartily said in his slight accent. "You are the American we were promised?"

"Yes, but I don't understand why there're soldiers here," Valentine replied. "This is a ruin-"

"Come inside," the Russian said.

After giving more formal greetings the Russian spoke again.

"We discovered this place in 1950," he said, "Back in Cold War days. It was turned over to the UN agency in charge of such things in 1993, after we had properly ascertained its age. After we knew its importance."

"And what is that age?"

"It was first inhabited about 50 000 years ago and fell to external aggression after eleven thousand years of habitation."

"You're shitting me."

"No, we did all the tests we could. And more than that, this thing is massive beyond anything else. The tunnels we've mapped out alone are almost the size of Western Europe. All undeniably artificial."

"Aliens?" he asked. It was only half-flippant.

"We don't know," the Russian replied. "We don't have a slightest clue what it contains, who built this thing or why. But our scouts in the entrance hall just last year uncovered a complete skeleton. It was human enough, but scraping off some DNA samples got odd results we're still trying to figure out. And worse than that, this figure had been tortured."

"Tortured?"

"Yes, tortured. For decades or centuries. Its bones had been broken and reset hundreds, possibly thousands of times - nobody's sure what it would've looked like if it hadn't been treated so cruelly. There were no signs of infection, oddly, but the leg showed bite marks consistent with canine teeth. It was eaten alive."

"Just who ran this place?" the archaeologist asked, his face blanching with horror.

"That's what we're trying to find out."

+++INSIDE+++

The entrance hall just beyond the gates existed without light, and Valentine found himself chattering as the cold wore at him, guided only by a dim circle of flashlights. Then suddenly he caught a glance of a glare of spotlights not too far away, and after what seemed like hours of walking on the bare granite flagstones surrounded by echoing voices he was in the advance base just before a set of immense stairs. The spotlights they shone down that way revealed high, rough steps, descending steadily down into an impenetrable darkness. Screams and manic tribal yelps echoed from below - from cracks in the flagstones, from the destination of that incredible staircase, from chasms stretching miles down to places no light ever dared touch.

"Are...are there people living there?" Valentine asked.

"Not people," Ivanov replied. "Monsters."

He described at length their stunted, hairless bodies, their slits where nostrils should be, their crude and primitive but brutal weapons, their exceeding sadism and cruelty, and especially the way they were diabolically cunning and loved horrific mechanical traps.

"We lost two scout parties to them in as many weeks," he said gloomily to Valentine. "Guns do little more than draw them like flies. One of my superiors said they were described in the Red Book - that we needed special weapons to deal with them, ones that could be found or made elsewhere. Going here is a fool's game."

"What's the Red Book?"

"My superiors in the Agency said this: it's an impossible manuscript in an isolated language found about 60 years ago in the Oxford countryside. Other than that I'm not cleared to know."

Valentine nodded, simultaneously confused and desperately curious.

"These cave monsters - could they get to the surface?" he asked with a tinge of morbid curiosity.

"That's our main concern. There could well be countless millions in this lightless pit - or more than millions. Much more."

Ivanov looked downcast.

"What is the Agency?"

"I don't really know. They're my bosses, that's all I need to hear. They're mysterious men, Valentine. Constantly on the move, constantly busy, and constantly paranoid. That's what they sounded like in the briefings. What I know is that they bear the weight of the world itself on their shoulders." 


	2. Chapter 2

+++NOVEMBER 2011, NOVAYA ZEMLYA+++

Sergeant Bradley looked from the observation tower at the frozen wasteland of ice. To the northeast those immense gates were rising at the end of the ice valley, the small base camp in their menacing shadow. Above the sky was a dark blue, brilliant stars shining in the almost-black sky of the polar night. Bradley noted idly that the Big Dipper seemed to have grown much brighter these past few months. Shining right above the valley right now, it sent a chill down his spine - though the feeling was somehow not unwelcome.

In any case, it was cold. His teeth chattered through the thermal clothing he wore, idly carrying his weapon. Far in the distance, a wolf howled far off to the south. The cry was replied to by one, then three, then dozens of similar howls which echoed all through the valley. They were miles away at the least.

Bradley decided to disengage the weapon's safety, as a few minutes later the howls resumed, closer now. Then silence reigned for ten minutes - Bradley knew he was being watched. The howls sounded again, this time to the east. This time they carried an air of predatory malice and hatred that burned in his blood.

Ancestral fear gripped him as his hands shook, remembering for an instant a midnight forest that he had never seen, and a great, impossibly large wolf blood-spattered, maddened with pain and rage, and filled with evil. A distant sympathetic pain struck his hand at the vision.

Then the wolf appeared in view. It was an immense creature, grotesquely overmuscled and viciously fanged. Its snow-white fur moved like quicksilver as it loped upon the ice, its eyes burning like orange fire. Behind it ran about four dozen smaller normal-sized creatures, still looking more vicious and bloodthirsty than any normal lupine - but not so crazed and malevolent as that singular monster.

It howled some fifty feet away - a long, cruel and utterly evil cry that spoke without words its eternal hatred for all men.

Then it began the attack.

It loped towards the fence under a barrage of assault rifle fire, bullets bouncing off its hide like rain. Bradley's hand, on his trigger, laid low three of the lesser beasts, their black blood freezing as it touched the ice, but the great wolf was unstoppable and smashed right through the electrified fence as if it was but air.

Screams and victorious howls swiftly filled the air, and possessed by some irrational madness Bradley rushed down the tower and to the breach site.

The horrid wolf-thing was smashing men aside with its paws, jumping and running through assault rifle fire, casually tearing heads and limbs off with its vicious fangs. For an instant Bradley saw into the thing's fiery eyes, and recoiled both at its human intelligence and its sadism beyond the measure of any beast. Then it began running at him.

How he did it he never knew. As it ran towards him, paws throwing loose snow off the ground, time seeming to slow to a crawl, he somehow got loose his combat knife and drew it, preparing to go down kicking and screaming.

The monster leapt before it could slow down, and impaled its neck on the outthrust weapon. Black, stinking blood flowed out in a high-pressure torrent as the beast screamed in pain, the foul liquid smoking as it touched the ground. But the monster was far from dead. It leapt at him again and pinned him to the ground, clawing at his face in feral pain and rage.

Red blood poured from his cheek and ran into his mouth, but he endured, the knife still in his hand, and stabbed the thing in the chest, the blade of the knife disappearing in its flesh and the hilt rapidly becoming slick with filthy black blood.

The horror slowed and tried to get itself off the weapon, but became limp as it did so. Its eyes however, retained their malevolent glare.

Bradley tried to get the rapidly cooling body off him, but as he did so a sudden and forceful wind blew from the west. The creature began to crumble, the white flakes of its form blown unstoppably eastward as it disintegrated, the last shred of its being to fade those malevolently-gleaming eyes.

Bradley began to breathe deep. The battle with that...thing had felt like minutes, but the people around acted as if it had been just a few seconds.

The wolf-pack outside, as if every member sensed some unheard signal, moved away as one and vanished into the night, seconds from breaching the fence.

+++THREE DAYS LATER, OXFORD+++

"Did you get the report from Site Beta?" the American asked his colleague as he put the beer glass to his lips and took a shot.

"Yes, and it scares me," the second man said in a British accent. "It's accelerating beyond our calculations. We only have till Solstice next year for the time predicted in Aelfwine to begin. The Westmarch source never anticipated this."

"These things are out of our control," the American spoke in reply. "All the choice we have is to decide what is done with the time that is given to us."

The British man nodded in agreement.

"Certainly," he said. "Is our search for the descendents going well?"

"Yes," the American said. "We've encountered significant traces of the old bloodline in close to a dozen families on the East Coast alone."

He handed his colleague a dossier.

"Speaking on other matters, how do our digs go at Site Gamma?"

"That is the Ukraine mountain?" the American asked, searching his memory. "Yes, we have the weapon and the stone. We can only trust that they aid us in the days ahead. _Much_ worse is coming than that wolf."

"Indeed," his colleague said, his face turning to a dark cast. Behind him the news shifted from the antics of a Nebraskan televangelist to a spike in activity at Vesuvius and then blizzards around Washington D.C.

The British man spoke again after a long pause.

"If we have the weapon, we need a wielder. If it does nothing but sit it's not helpig anyone."

"Who should we give the sword to, then? It's not like there's a hundred of them."

"I'd say Bradley. The man deserves it."

"He'll certainly need it."

+++APRIL 2012, AFRICA+++

It was a minor thing. Weak, pathetic. A being of far greater malice than ability. And as it drifted formless and unclad through the burning jungle village, it laughed silently to itself. Around it, houses were burning, women were being raped, men were being slaughtered in droves. Mere confirmation of humanity's wickedness.

It had long memories. It had been a spirit of great potency in the old days and had had yet greater cunning. By his hand the Second Age had ended and the brightest star of men turned to a darkness. By his hand the last flower of the Firstborn in Middle-Earth had been ripped from the ground and burned from root to blossoming crown.

But then its tower had fallen, and it had fled from the ruin a bodiless shred of mind and unquenchable spirit, driven by the whims of the uncaring wind. For long ages it had drifted aimless and formless. It had seen orc-cults rise in Annuminas and raze half the city in beautiful fire. It had seen the hosts of the east destroy the last redoubt of the Edain, and then the great tide of destruction that had been unleashed to root them out, changing lands and rivers till they were nigh-impossible to recognise.

When the remnants of the Followers achieved their petty civilisations, their Babylons and Egypts, their Greeces and their Romes, it had been there. It had seen an oriental despot burn books and sink scholars - that wickedness had pleased it particularly, and had strengthened it much. Drifting westward, it encountered yet more war and disorder, seeing a brilliant city burn by the deceitful stratagem of a hollow wood vessel. It had in the same place many years later seen a despot from the east march on that same teritory, and drunk deep of the horrors of war - till the steadfast determination of a few hundred soldiers sent it retreating in pain and terror.

Some few hundred years later, in an eastern region it had felt much pain while drifting through coastal hills, almost as if the One himself were present close by. But that was impossible.

The following centuries had been a veritable banquet. An empire fell, and cities all over burned for many centuries. 'Heretics' and 'witches' had been tortured and hanged many times over. Religious schisms had led to decades of brutal war, and the pain and misery and fear had sped beyond all measure its recovery.

Then drifting through a city it had seen execution machines murdering scores by decapitation, and wars swftly following. Slave-plantations had been common in the west, and there again it feasted richly on the Children's ever-present failure.

It still remembered when and where it had regained self-directed motion. It had been a wasteland of churned mud, twisted trees and barbed wire - a Mordor of the Aftercomers' own making, a place of death and brutal slaughter matched only by the Unnumbered Tears. From thereon it had moved on to visit sites of atrocity and dictatorship and misapplied knowledge, growing ever more powerful through the decades. Soon it would be able to take a body for itself and begin again.

It remembered with great satisfaction a recent place far to the east of here, a city of high towers and palm trees. There it had seen a collection of women, wearing black all over, carrying placards of a gold-haired woman they evidently detested. They had spoken in unison their chant of honey-sweet, near-mindless fanatic hate, such as that it had not encountered but decades ago in a far northward country - a word that meant _"infidel"_. The fallibility of the Children always always amused it, and that in particular had made it laugh for weeks.

Now it changed direction and began moving north-westward with the speed of the wind.

Suddenly it felt a new power filling it, almost like its old master back in the days of Gondolin and Nargothrond. Far more pleasing a repast than the atrocities it had absorbed from, the new power felt almost _electric_ to partake of.

It most definitely had work to do.

+++DECEMBER 2011+++

'The claims these...activists have put forth about Orthanc Technologies are utterly ludicrous," the raven-haired man in white said, his mellifluous voice echoing in the conference hall. The black-armoured bodyguards standing by were silent as always, their faces granite. The journalists attending kept on taking pictures.

"We do not and have never had ambitions of assembling a military force," he went on, continuing to captivate the crowd. "What we have done is begun a major expansion in our on-site security force, due to threats by dangerous and malevolent eco-terrorists."

"Is it true that your Shanghai expansions have caused significant environmental deterioration?" a brunette woman asked.

"Any damage caused by our Chinese branch is minor and unintentional," the man replied. "There is lots of anti-industrial propaganda running round these days, but we take care for our workers within reason. Our military and electronics contracts with China and India are simply too lucrative to ignore. As you know, money does make the world go round."

The man seemed so reasonable and self-assured it was hard to disagree.

"What of the claims that your outsourcing is severely damaging the health of local communities?"

"When we do lay off workers we do what we can to help them, but industrial labour is expensive here in Britain and it just isn't profitable to keep these out-of-date factories in motion."

What he said seemed almost naturally true, and the journalists left the room, in general satisfied by what the clear-speaking man in white had said. 


	3. Chapter 3

+++NOVEMBER 17 2011, NOVAYA ZEMLYA+++

Thaddeus Bradley was freezing in the seemingly-everlasting polar night, the dimly lit medical room seeming unnaturally cold as yet another blizzard assailed the base camp. There was news from deeper in the caverns now - further exploration was unsustainable, some impossible radio silence emanating throughout the caverns. However, more troops were being sent into the caverns - after some earthmoving a few vehicles had even managed to enter.

Not that Bradley was going in. The place creeped him out more than ever now, and sometimes he could hear ghosts of screams echoing from its cavernous depths. They said a whole underworld existed there, a vast black pit lit dimly by corpse-light and filled with monsters beyond human imagination or reckoning.

Besides, the wolf attack had been bad. Though his wounds were well on the way to fully healing, the doctors said there would always be scars.

Knuckles rapped on the door, which then opened inward. A man walked through, statuesque, tall and incredibly handsome. Short and well-kept blond hair framed a patrician and youthful face that looked as if it would not be out of place on King Arthur, below which a few shreds of stubble could be seen. The expression was calm and measured. The man wore a simple black trenchcoat, a long and elegant sword scabbarded at his belt.

As he moved closer, Bradley saw that in his eyes was a strange inner light. There was a power about it, and yet a kind of gentle kindness and serenity, a sense of effortless action . That sense manifested itself also in the graceful and yet measured way he moved, as if he was one with his surroundings.

"Greetings, Sergeant Thaddeus Bradley," the man said, measured and gently, almost like music. 'You were brave beyond all the other soldiers five days ago. Few others could have acheived what you did.'

"In any case," he continued. 'My superiors wished to give you this.' He took out a parcel he had been carrying under his coat and unwrapped it to unveil a fine, artistically designed sword about three feet long. Runes gleamed on its blade and jewels shone bright on its gilded hilt.

"This is an old weapon," he went on. 'It was borne by a lord of a vanished city and a king of another. I would also wish to give you this, as I sense dimly that you will do great deeds with it in the dark days that are sure to come.'

"You will need it soon," he ended.

"I will take it," Bradley replied. 'But...where do you come from and who do you work for?'

"I come from the West," the man replied, stressing heavily that particular word. "And I work right now for the same people you do. You will hear from them shortly."

+++NOVEMBER 19, SITE ALPHA+++

The small four-story building located in a small interdicted zone in the Oxford countryside was the nerve centre of the Agency. It was thus not a surprise that a large part of it was given up to a library.

There were volumes everywhere - medieval manuscripts, 19th century trance recordings, Anglo-Saxon mariners' tales, divergent Bibles, bizarre world maps and all number of other things. The Director liked to spend his time there, and could almost never be found in his office as a result.

The blond-haired man who had been to Bradley two days ago approached the Director's desk with the same air of effortless motion as he had all the time.

"I have done what you requested I do," he said to the tall, elderly Persian-looking man dressed in a dark blue pinstripe suit.

"Then it is well," the man spoke in reply. "I tarried overlong eastwards last time the Shadow rose. Though I did what I could I failed to bring victory. It lies heavy on me."

"None of us did, Morinehtar," the blond man replied. "Though we all struggled hard and fought bravely, in the end only a halfling's pity saved us from the Darkness."

"And in the end of that coming Age the East overthrew the west," the man replied sadly. "I could not fully prevent the lies of Sauron from taking root in a new generation and leading it, as ever, to its destruction. Thus in the ruin of Endor the Straight Road was lost to me, and I was left on these hither shores until the world should be broken."

"But I will ever seek to protect these people," he finished. "My old sorrows and failures will be as nothing if we are not ready by next year's solstice."

He reached to a remote and turned a nearby television on.

The news was grim, reporting a tropical storm that was veering wildly for Sydney and showed no sign of slowing in speed or intensity. The female anchor spoke earnestly about how very few could be evacuated and any survivors would be ruined for sure.

"He looses his first darts," the man spoke grimly. "Not meant to destroy us but merely to measure our strength for his next attacks. His true strikes against us will be terrible indeed. And when Earendil ceases in the heavens many men will bow down and worship him, for after that they will have lost all hope that he can be conquered."

The blond man winced as if recalling a far-distant and yet incredibly painful memory.

"But such a time is not now," the old man replied. "We must prepare while we can."

The news program switched to a topic about rapidly rising wolf populations in Northern and Central Europe and increasingly frequent attacks before digressing into an identikit celebrity scandal, at which point it was unceremoniously turned off. 


	4. Chapter 4

+++SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - NOVEMBER 21+++

Gale-force winds battered the opera house as rain drops fell like bullets, driven by vicious raging winds. Around the forlorn building abandoned cars and trucks were picked up like toys and sent flying by the furious gusts. Sheets of lightning flashed in the sky as bolts of electric terror continued to rain down. Small fires began to ignite, quickly doused but sending embers to reproduce the terror. Trees were casually sent flying by the strong winds, sent careening into buildings and smashing into what few vehicles still tried to move on the roads.

A dozen bolts of lightning struck the opera house. White tiles cascaded off and the building itself exploded into sudden flame. A dozen feet away, another lightning strike blasted a crater in a nearby car-park, cars exploding and burning around the smoking pithole.

Jackie Anderson was a mother of four and quite terrified. Huddled in the store attached to a petrol station, she looked around to her children, the oldest just under eight.

"Mummy," one of her twin girls asked. "Where's daddy? Is he alright?"

"I can't say," she grimly admitted, then stole a glance from a nearby window. Water was pouring down the street in a massive unstoppable tide, smashing aside scattered traffic like it was nothing, driving straight through houses and businesses as it rushed unstoppably upon them. Brick and wood crumbled beneath its advance, and the detritus, mixed with what might have been corpses, was driven ahead constantly as the storm surge continued through the city, a roaring juggernaut of destruction.

It was seconds from reaching them when lightning struck and Jackie's world turned to a brief flash of fire and pain.

Elsewhere, skyscrapers set alight were beginning to finally crumble under the assault of the wicked flames and vicious winds. Like tottering giants, they begin to tilter and finally crashed down on the streets below, killing thousands as they smashed into groups of survivors. Perverse dominos, some crashed into each other and precipitated the collapse of the next, falling in turn with a sickening finality.

There was no light, no power, and no communication. Many drowned or burned for lack of warning; as the floodwaters poured into the underground, the train stations became sites of dreadful death by drowning, the people skulking inside unknowing of the watery doom soon to approach.

For five hours the storm reigned supreme and the sun was gone from all sight and knowledge. But then a wind came out of the west, belated but strong. It seemed that the wind was struggling with the storm, and at first it seemed impotent against that raging elemental might - but the wind blew stronger and stronger yet, and the storm was driven back, and over Sydney at long last the sun shone forth again, bright and at its zenith, as the triumphing breeze blasted the clouds of Morgoth away eastwards. Over the sea they dwindled and fell apart, dissipating in a cool western breeze and fading away.

+++TWO DAYS LATER+++

Sydney was devastated.

The city looked like it had been the site of an atomic explosion or two. All but a tenth of its buildings had been destroyed or otherwise rendered unlivable. Two million people were dead and five hundred thousand missing. A few fires still cast palls of smoke over the ruins. Water flowed through the streets still, and in many districts the only transportation was by helicopter. There was no power and the airport was in ruins.

A cargo ship lying on its side covered half of the famous opera house, now a smoking ruin. Many other civic buildings were simply gone, wiped away as by a hand on a blackboard.

Sydney would never recover.

Even as journalists rushed in to recount the devastation, scientists were puzzled. The storm, dubbed Hurricane Cynthia, had made a massive increase in strength mere minutes before landfall. If it had not done so, the city might well have better weathered the disaster.

Not that Sydney had been the only victim. Hundreds of miles of coastline had been devastated. Whole towns had been swept out to sea by the storm surges, leaving nothing but swiftly-onrushing water behind. But Sydney had been struck with almost the full power of the hurricane, stronger than any since records began.

It would not be a good summer for Australia.

+++VALIMAR+++

It was night in the Blessed Realm and by all accounts things should have been glad. But there was a darkness growing of late in the hearts of the elf-kindreds within, a shadow of distant fear.

Its cause was easily noticeable if one looked at the sky. In the places between the brilliant stars of Varda Elentari, in a central segment of the Walls of Night, was a crack. It was hairline-thin, but it was a crack. One glance made it obvious to sight - it seemed blacker than black, the ultimate darkness beyond even her night sky. A gnawing malice was behind that, and those who looked too long swore that they saw some horrific indescribable _thing_ looking back at them with bottomless malice. Fear was abroad in Valinor.

The silver bells of Valimar, the city of golden roofs and diamond streets, were silent as from one of the central towers Elrond Peredhil looked pensively. His vision looked westward unencumbered by any horizon (for no such thing existed in Valinor, which was not bent like Arda nowadays), scrying northward to the hunting halls of Orome and the wrestling grounds of Tulkas, glancing southward to the green-gold fields of Yavanna and the forests of Lorien, flashing to the silent mansions of Mandos and the last lonely tower of Nienna before the great obsidian gates of sunset.

Yet always his gaze found itself transfixed against its better judgement to that fissure in the night sky. It would not be long - all of Valinor knew that. Eastwards the Teleri were building an armada of ships, and with Tulkas and Orome the first warriors Valinor had known in many millennia were being trained. Between the Pelori and the City of Bells a series of low green hills rose disconcertingly in the surrounding plains, still silently waiting for their purpose.

But to see, to _feel_ proof of Morgoth's imminent return - that was something new entirely. Through the long hours of night he continued to watch, and as morning came and Earendil shone to herald Arien the wound in the sky was obvious to all vision as a black fissure in the midst of steel blue.

Elrond turned his face away from the window and back to the circular dark-blue stone gleaming on its marble pedestal. It had been crafted by Feanor and its history had been long indeed. From Annuminas through strange roads it had gone into the West and been set here in this tower just one Valian year ago. Now it spoke to the Anor-stone.

Putting his hands on the crystal Elrond recieved a brief vision - of aged hands wreathed forever in flame - but with an effort of will pushed the image of the last Steward's doom aside and opened the connection. A handsome face framed by golden hair appeared.

_"Master Elrond,"_ the figure's voice spoke out of the seeing-stone into Elrond's mind. _"It is good to see you once more. How go affairs in Valinor?"_

_"The Walls of Night cracked two days ago,"_ Elrond said. _"The wound is a blight on the morning sky. Perhaps now our people will truly realise the gravity of the situation."_

_"This concerns me. Have the Valar spoken?"_

_"Ulmo seems most gravely concerned. Of the rest I know not. How are affairs on Arda?"_

_"Morgoth has unleashed a terrible storm to strike at Men. So many of them died and there was no way they could protect themselves. It angers me that he is not sending forth his hosts. At least my blade could make good work of them, but even I cannot strike down the storm."_

_"The Valar trusted in you alone to help Arda prepare. You must do what you can quickly. Before long Morgoth's hosts will be prepared to make war on Arda. Then your sword will be of use, Lord of Gondolin. But not now. Not now."_

+++DECEMBER 25 2011+++

There were many dreams that Christmas, and they were not good.

As families and individuals slept, preparing for the day of joy and frivolity to come, a shadow went over them. A voice went into whatever they dreamt of, asking them in mellifluous tones to 'come and listen'. In their dreams they walked through a nondescript door or portal, and found themselves in darkness. The voice guided them, urged them to continue walking.

They found their way through another door, and appeared on a howling pinnacle of ice and obsidian, walking through biting cold and scorching heat, forced to crawl on hands and knees by stinging winds. Then looking up they found themselves gazing at a throne of gold and black marble, and upon it a man made of swirling darkness. In his right hand blazed red-hot, swirling, smoking flame while in his left frost and ice sucked out warmth and life. All eyes turned to him, forced to gaze at the deep shadows of his face.

"I am coming for you," he said, and his red eyes blazed with dark fire.

"Do not hide. I will find you."

The malice which poured from him became almost overwhelming, and the only things in existence seemed to be the black throne, shadowy flesh and that fiery glare.

"Do not think you can run. There is no life in the void, only death."

"You will not be saved. I will find you, and you will die screaming like your world."

There were many early awakenings that day, and almost all were in terror and crawling fear.

The malice had begun its work.


	5. Chapter 5

+++NAPLES, ITALY - JANUARY 24TH 2012+++

The black car parked and Doctor Angelo from the university opened the door. A flower vase on a nearby windowsill lay shattered on the street. However, the mayor was still open for business. The university professor walked through the door of City Hall, idly listening to the sound of business outside, and moved through the corridors to the office.

The mayor sat at the far end of the room, his bulk obvious despite the distance. His eyes were glazed over and Angelo could almost _taste_ the alcohol on the man's breath.

"Tell me what you have to say," the mayor said, his words plainly slurred. "And don't waste my time, egghead."

"Mayor Donatello," the scientist said. "We've looked over the data from Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei and it looks bad. In about six months' time there's going to be an eruption of Vesuvius like the one that buried Pompeii - probably worse. You have to consider evacuation!"

"I heard lots of people say stuff like that before," the mayor replied. "Always saying the world's gonna end in three weeks' time or whatever. You know what - it keeps on spinning. Life goes on."

"Mayor Donatello, we have scientific-"

"Time's up," the mayor lazily replied and gestured for Angelo to leave the room.

The door slammed about two seconds later.

+++NEBRASKA, FEBRUARY 3RD 2012+++

The man did not reveal his face, the survivors always remembered afterward. The US Army base was not particularly large - it primarily functioned as an arsenal. About 250 Abrams tanks stood in lengthy rows along with Hummers and many other vehicles on a clear patch of fenced-in scrubland. Many artillery vehicles also stood neatly parked opposite the other vehicles. South of that, a quarter of the base was given over to barracks and other facilities, The other half of the base consisted of four massive warehouses brimming with military equipment, from M16s to laser-guided missiles.

He came along the highway just after dusk, wearing plain black leathers, riding on an all-black Harley and wearing a black motorbike helmet that concealed his entire face. His hands were gloved as well - no part of his body was uncovered. As he approached the gateway to the base a security guard - balding, middle-aged, overwieght, asked the tall, faceless man's ID.

"You will let me in," came the reply, in a voice soft as a whisper and chilling as a harsh wind over ice.

The security guard idly raised the gate, then closed his eyes and slammed his head on the controls. A slow death-rattle rushed from his mouth as the last shreds of life faded from him. The man, once inside, dismounted the motorbike and began walking leisurely toward the warehouses, turning his head to look at the assembled vehicles once he did so. So utilitarian they were. War-machines more fitting for conversion could scarcely be found.

He noted individuals trying to challenge him. For the most part they fell at his breath, screaming and gurgling as their souls sickened. Others were slain with merciless, efficient blows from a sword that seemed to be made of night He quickly finshed taking inventory of the stock and began going about his task.

As he began a warrior of sterner constitution attacked, trying to defend himself with a combat knife. The man in black let the steel pierce his leathers, then smirked beneath the helm as the blade shattered and crumbled. A dagger flew into his left hand and from there it pierced the other's left shoulder. He screamed and collapsed as a shard of black material fell off and embedded itself. The rest of the blade dropped from the figure's hand almost casually, oily smoke pouring from it as it hit the ground and vanished from its hilt to the tip of its blade, leaving melted snow where it had fallen.

Behind the figure the foolhardy man still screamed. It was no concern - by morning he would not be of help to his friends. The figure continued walking, turning back its head in a manner almost serpentine to smile pleasedly at the hapless man behind, then turned it forwards once more.

He had work to do.

Next morning the troops who had slept through the whole incident without knowledge of it, save for terrible dreams, woke up to find that everything in the arsenal - from the Abrams tanks down to the shell casings kept in the warehouse - was gone and an unnatural chill hung over the place, the few signs of what had happened obscured beyond hope by falling snow.

A set of motorbike tracks went from a hole in the fence far off into the wilderness.

+++MARCH 28TH - SITE ALPHA+++

Thaddeus Bradley adjusted his beret slightly and swung the sword again. It was a beautiful weapon and he would have taken the utmost care of it if not for the fact that it never seemed to dull or lose the silvery lustre ever-present in its blade. As it was, the wooden training dummy was bisected so finely that the top half didn't fall off till nudged slightly by his finger. That was _craftsmanship_.

He had sparred every day for months with the other people being trained in swordsmanship here, but his sword cut straight through their weapons so casually it didn't seem fair using the perfectly balanced weapon. The other he had never come close to beating - the blond man who had gifted him his sword easily outmatched him every time they sparred. Bradley's all-time record for that guy was holding out 30 seconds.

And yet somehow the blond man always seemed to be holding the greater part of himself back. If he hadn't, Bradley was sure that none of their duels would have lasted 30 seconds - _one_ would have been a miracle.

"Stephanie, you ready?" he heard across the training ground. He turned his head and saw the tempestuous blonde New Yorker putting her practice sword in a parry position. Swords clashed in the distance and three minutes later Bradley saw her regal as always, helping her opponent back on his feet and giving him some much-needed water. _God, she's beautiful,_ he thought, as he always did when seeing that lovely face and the blue eyes set so perfectly in it like sapphires. It was about 30 minutes later, after three sparring matches with practice swords (which were all victories), that Bradley went to sleep as the night shift began.

His dreams were odd, as they had always been after that wolf attack in Russia. This night it was a recurring feature.

He saw a fair country, a land filled with gold-crowned silver-barked trees, with green fields and domed hills and high mountains and fair white-towered cities. Then he was near the top of a mountain or in the clouds (he could never really tell) and a great wave was washing across that beautiful land, unstoppable ad relentless. The fair cities and towns were swept up in the roaring onslaught of foam like so much driftwood, and the tall trees and the high hills were lost in the flood as a deep melancholy filled him.

Then suddenly a great city was besieged by monsters, darkness filled the sky and foul bat-winged beasts flew in the air slaying where they willed. The distorted, degraded parodies of human form were then met in battle by gold-haired horsemen who sang as they slew, milling around elephantine beasts who brayed and shook the ground. Axes and spears were loosed around him, and the city was made safe.

Then its king, now dead a long time later was entombed, and his sword was in his right hand. Waters then swept over the tomb and for a short time barnacles covered the king's imperial face graven on his sarcophagus-lid - then the tomb became a cavern lit with reeking torches and pale, ape-like creatures snuck in and defiled the king and stole his sword - and then dropped it because its touch burned them and turned away from it because its light seared their eyes, and so the blade was lost in darkness forever.

He woke slowly that morning, and remembered suddenly the briefing due for a special mission.

The man there was middle-aged, black-haired and wore an eyepatch over his left eye. They said he had lost it in Site Gamma somewhere in the Ukraine when the Agency had been doing its first tentative explorations.

There were seven agents requested for this - Bradley looked to his right and saw that one of the agents was Stephanie. She looked back as if she wanted to say something important, then returned to looknig straight aheadf.

The man continued speaking in his British accent.

"...This mission has been authorised by the Director personally. As I have stated, our objective is to recover a class-Alpha item located in the Vienna location by all means necessary. However, discretion is advised. The mission will proceed in four steps: Step 1, Scout out the catacombs and find a way to the location marked as most probable on your maps; Step 2, ascertain enemy forces in the area; Step 3, identify and recover the item; Step 4, extract."

"We cannot get support for you, as our task forces in Poland and Novaya Zemlya urgently need reinforcement, and in any case we cannot have civilian awareness of our efforts - the Enemy's spies and other agents are growing in number fast. The seven of you are all we've got."

He went out and handed dossiers to each of the seven agents.

"Read these for further details. At 1300 hours we make for Austria. Godspeed." 


	6. Chapter 6

+++VALINOR+++

The green grass had been cleared in several large circles for the camp being steadily constructed here around seven low and rolling hills to the northeast of Valimar. Tents were rising fast, stuck into the black, ever-fertile earth of Valinor, and already the products of Aule's forges were arriving by cart. Bows, spears, shields and suits of armour were going from those forges by a marble-paved road which had a few weeks ago been nothing but a narrow track, being given to the soldiers as their needs required. 10,000 of the Firstborn had answered the summons of Tulkas Astaldo the past few months. The vast majority were of the Noldor, the elf-kindred most knowledgeable in war (to their everlasting sorrow), but no few of the Vanyar had also began to join the host being gathered.

Ancalimon was one of the Noldor to have joined the host, a descendant of one who had left Endor after the overthrow of Morgoth. In the bright heat of early afternoon it seemed odd to be out of Valimar and even stranger to be carrying a sword in hand. His ancestors had used those weapons - not merely on orcs and other wicked beasts, but on others of the Eldar. If only such weapons, meant only to kill others of the Children, would never be used again. Overhead an eagle let out its piercing cry as it flew eastwards, snapping Ancalimon out of his musings.

His gaze flew up and tracked it unneringly as it flew to Taniquetil, flying over the wooded foothills and lesser peaks surrounding the mountain, rising to perch on a lesser summit (itself much higher than any mountain remaining on Endor) to stare fixedly towards the East. Towards Endor, the land where Morgoth would strike his most devastating bows. He looked from the hill-slope - southwest, more provisions were arriving from Yavanna's fields, yellow waybread and scarlet miruvor in the quantities required for the expedition. And of course, the crack in the western sky remained.

Eldar were sparring with swords and practicing with spears and bows, or learning to ride horses in battle-formation. So busy was the camp that Ancalimon barely noticed when a white rider drove furiously out of the forest to the north.

He was dressed in clothes the colour of forest leaves with a hint of silver underneath, his lance stern and a silver bow at his back. His dark-brown hair was wild in the wind and a woodsman's axe was scabbarded at his waist. Dismounting his white horse he strode powerfully towards the camp. Suddenly there was a commotion - of what cause Ancalimon could not hear - as a thud was heard on the ground.

Rushing toward the sound, he saw Orome with a drake's head at his feet.

"It tried to hide by a nearby stream," the Vala said matter-of-factly. "A fire-serpent of Morgoth has been found and many others may yet be present in this fair land."

A fire-serpent? In Valinor? Ancalimon shuddered. Those had only been stories, spoken of in the _Noldolantë_ and the other tales of Beleriand. He remembered hearing of them as a young child, and of being reassured that they could not touch him in Valimar. If one such as...

"Do not be alarmed," the Vala continued. "But you must be careful. The camp needs to be defended. I will speak with Astaldo of the affair."

He gestured, and Astaldo was there, with the Maia Meassë along in full regalia of war. The three spoke at length in their own language, harsh like the glitter of swords, and Ancalimon listened eagerly though he knew nothing of what they said.

Above, Arien continued her course.

+++SITE ALPHA, MARCH 29TH+++

Bradley's jaw dropped as they entered the underground hangar. The room was a high-tech wonderland, with technicians eagerly looking at computer screens and calibrating instruments. But in the centre was what was msot important. A small plane stood in the centre, jet-black with the Agency's device (a stylised rendition of the Plough) on the doors. It was built for speed, Bradley could tell that. Its wings were swept back, and its engines, currently inactive, gleamed slightly with a blue fire.

"Our newest transport plane," the Sergeant, a British man named Mark, casually said. "Behold, the Falcon-49. Can go form here to Moscow in just over an hour. Can only seat seven, but they _will_ get there in time."

He opened the door and shouted, "Come on in!"

Stephanie was first in, followed shortly by Bradley and then the 5 other squad members. They buckled up quickly. The pilot swiftly went through the pre-launch sequence and then the floor, or the plane, seemed to pitch until it reached a 45-degree angle. Then the machine shot up into the air and the Oxfordshire countryside dwindled into nothing but a grey-green blur. A few minutes later, Bradley saw stars shining out the windows and the earth curved below him. It seemed to him of extraordinary beauty, but somehow almost imperceptibly flawed, like a perfectly-cut diamond with a tiny chip that nevertheless ruined the entire stone.

For about ten minutes they cruised with the Earth's cities imperceptible below them, then just as suddenly as it had lifted off, it began to shoot back down to the surface, thrusters and retros blazing bright. For an instant Bradley had the terrible feeling that they would crash, destroying themselves on the ground below, then their fall slowed and they began a more gentle descent until fifteen minutes later they touched the asphalt underneath.

Looking around the base and waiting, Bradley saw many soldiers passing through, going northeastward by rail. Most were probably heading to join the growing Russo-American task force around Novaya Zemlya, but more than a few were heading to the even more secretive Site Delta in Poland. Looking at the soldiers milling, Bradley barely noticed when Stephanie sat next to him.

"The sky's changing," she said, pointing up.

At first Bradley could see nothing, but then the seven faint stars resolved themselves into a familiar shape painted on the eggshell-blue sky.

"Yeah," Bradley said in agreement.

"By the way," Stephanie said nervously. "I've had...dreams. Since I was a child, but more often lately. They were of deep catacombs below the earth. Filled with monsters."

She continued, "I've looked at the pictures they took of Site Alpha-1 - that's what they call it - in the late 50's and it's just like in the dreams."

"Really?" he asked.

"Yeah," she replied. "We'll see what's happened there while we were away."

+++TWO HOURS LATER+++

The long-abandoned salt mine was the only safe entrance to Alpha-1. After taking a truck to the entrance and descending in a rickety elevator, they found themselves quickly on the first level of the ancient catacombs. Bradley's sword seemed to hum - he drew it to see a faint blue gleam coating its blade. The others also drew their weapons, and began advancing into the darkness, swords drawn.

Bradley walked next to Stephanie, and began to hear unseen footfalls in the dark tunnels. They were narrow and they had to stoop many times to get through. Often a maniac cackle or bestial roar rang through the tunnels as the soldiers continued walking as lightly as they could. Bradley's sword was shining blue well enough to use as a torch, and was invaluable in getting through the tunnels.

Eventually they came to a wide chamber where they rested and ate. However, Mark was clearly worried.

"Something's sealed the passageway," he said, pointing to a recent collapse. "So that's how Red Team vanished."

The deep finality in his voice filled the atmosphere with menace.

"We'll take the left-hand way," he continued. Almost on cue Bradley's sword swung to point right at the dark passageway. "It should be manageable."

Creeping down the corridor, walking on slick stone steps that led down into darkness, they began to hear manical laughter, agonised screaming, tribal chanting, hideous roars and dozens of other pandemoniac sounds. Skittering footsteps were quickly drowned out by the other hideous noises coming from further down.

Then they saw the first monsters. They were human-like small, dwarfish even with slick, pale skin and sunk-in eyes. They didn't seem to have noticed yet, creeping through the darkness, flitting from shadow to shadow and then disappearing through crevices and holes in the rock.

Eventually, they were discovered. Pasing a small chamber Ludwig yeleld out in his German accent.

"Show yourselves!" he shouted. "You creeping, skulking little monsters, come out and face us!"

Before Mark could so much as shout a profanity the sound of drums filled the corridors.

_Doom, doom_.

Bradley and Stephanie drew swords and stood together, prepared to fight.

_Doom, doom_.

Hundreds of scratching, screeching voices surrounded them.

_Doom, doom_.

A monster burst in.

It was a massive lizard larger than a horse, belly thick with fat, thick stubby fangs at its teeth, a long tail swinging behind it. Venom poured from its mouth. Its eyes shone with bestial cunning and its pale, slimy, troglodytic appearance was sickening to look at. Behind it dozens of the goblins followed, carrying rusted, brutal cleavers and maces, close to the edge of the room, milling about, shying away from Bradley's sword.

The lizard-thing leapt into the attack. With one bite of its massive jaws it ripped Ludwig asunder, Bradley holding himself back from rushing to help in as the German's red blood sprayed out from the ruin of his chest. His devastated head, rolling from the cadaver it had been so casually torn off, still had an expression of shock on its face.

From the other side of the room another monster broke in. It was more humanlike than the other creatures, who went up to slightly below its knees, and it was head-and-shoulders above all the Men in the chamber. A hooked sword, designed to tear the vitals, was held in its hand. Its feral mien had a single crude daubing upon the forehead - a solitary red eye.

The thing muttered some curse in a language Bradley didn't know, and ran straight at him with its crude, massive blade. The sword connected with Orcrist, parried but unbroken. A hand then sent a feral swipe at Bradley's light-brown hair, narrowly missing but tearing a good-sized clump of hair off. The pain shocked Bradley and he barely thought to parry a second blow. Around him goblins were falling, but the monster he faced was easily keeping up its barrage of wicked blows.

~*~

Stephanie's sword was rising and falling in great arcs as the goblins kept coming. The lizard-thing ripped one apart in her peripheral vision, apparently finding Ludwig's shreds too stringy a meal to digest. Behind her, on the other side of a central pillar, Bradley was fighting for his life. The six left now were fighting as individuals, but Bradley sounded like he was in the worst predicament of them all. If she could only get to him-

-The lizard loosed fire from its mouth, a blazing inferno like the inside of a blast furnace pouring out continuously. Mark and Jacobs flashed to fire and screamed as they burned, then ceased suddenly. She winced as she saw Mark just...obliterated and Jacobs half-charred to ashen bones. They were both beyond all aid. The lizard smashed a boulder aside with one of its forelegs, and Stephanie ducked just before the monster ended her 23 years. Crawling, her own sword half-melted by the creature's blazing breath, she caught sight of something - a glint of gold? Silver? Without thought she reached out and found a sword - not one of those goblin-weapons but a great longsword of perfectly-balanced steel. As her hand closed round it blazed like a sudden flame, scores of goblins taking flight and scurrying into the passageways.

She ducked again as the lizard loosed more fire, this time close to it, just in striking distance of its unarmoured belly. Without a thought she thrust her blade into the drake's underside, thick black blood pouring out in torrents where her sword hilted itself in the thing's flabby flesh. The monster screamed a hideous cry, shrieking beyond any normal pain, and rolled to its side limp and lifeless.

~*~

The chieftain (or so Bradley was thinking of him) roared and brought his heavy blade down again on Orcrist, using it almost like a hammer - but the venerable weapon would not budge. Only Bradley's arms could. Suddenly the chieftain brought his final strike down, clearly intending to use all his might and break the ancient sword. His own sword shattered into a thousand pieces, flying wildly around the cavern as heavy shards of rusted metal.

Bradley did not waste his opening. The chieftain charged with his clawed fingers extended - Orcrist was already in the way. It pierced iron, flesh, and bone with ease. The creature gurgled his last breaths, black blood bubbling from his lips, then his eyes glazed and he went limp.

Turning his head he saw Stephanie carrying Ludwig's corpse, a gold-hilted blade in her scabbard.

"How we doing?" he asked, panting.

"I think we're done," he said. "We've got the item, Myers has a broken arm but will recover, other than that the guys left are fine."

"We should take our dead back up," he panted. "Can't let the bastards get to them."

"Yeah," Stephanie said then paused.

"I have to talk to you soon. Alone."

"Sure." 


	7. Chapter 7

+++MARCH 30, 2012+++

Stephanie Danvers knelt on the cool, damp earth and looked to the three sullen mounds where her comrades lay. Those places underground were perilous enough - she suspected the daily losses in Russia were higher yet - but to have it demonstrated so totally was still shocking. She had never seen death before - as a woman from a lower middle-class family in New York City, to see men die in the flesh had been something outside her understanding. She fingered the crucifix hanging about her neck - those men were somewhere else now. Somewhere better, hopefully.

She did not cry, but the lump in her throat was still there. Mark and the others had been good men. The sword hanging at her belt however, felt warm like no other weapon she had touched had. It was like a part of her, an extension almost of her soul. Like she had recovered a part of her body lost from birth, and now she was wondering how she could ever have got by without it.

Her respects paid, she left the small cemetary and went to look for Bradley. She had feelings for the man and she needed to talk. She found him on the sparring ground, matching himself against a few of the new troops. The three of them were barely holding their ground. The battle shifted quickly to Bradley's favour, and a minute later they were sweatedly leaving the arena.

Their eyes met instantaneously. Bradley approached slowly, noticing her shyness, and offered to buy a drink at a nearby bar. They got to the place quickly enough, Bradley ordering two glasses of sparkling water and choosing an isolated set of seats.

"You alright?" Bradley asked, noticing the woman's silence.

"Yeah," Stephanie replied. "But that fight in the caverns is still dwelling on me."

She sighed.

"I know," Bradley said wistfully. "Mark was a great guy. Damn shame he had to die that way. Bastards got way too lucky that time. But don't blame yourself. You couldn't have saved them anyhow."

"Yes," Stephanie said. "I know I couldn't have made a difference. But it still haunts me."

"I can see that in your eyes," the man said, his hazel eyes touching Stephanie's sky-blue ones. "I've lost men before. A raid into the site in Russia. Almost all of the team killed by those things, and we never even saw them. There we only heard their voices in the dark around us, and the patter of their feet on wet stone."

"I can imagine-"

"I ended up alright - so will you probably. But damn if it didn't hurt me after to know they had all died under my command."

He turned his head down.

"Brad-Bradley," the woman continued, a hesitance developing in her voice distinct from the sadness she had been experiencing. "I don't know but I've been having some...feelings about you. I didn't want to say because of the mission and all but I think you should know now. I...I don't know, but I think I'm beginning to fall in love with you."

Bradley turned his head up and drank before speaking, seeming hesitant to reply.

"I know, Stef," he said. "I've been having much the same thoughts. I can honestly say I'm attracted by you. I want to see you happy. I love your face, your hair, those long legs and those pretty blue eyes. You're so beautiful. I want to hold you and never let go."

"Thanks. I never really thought of myself as _beautiful_ before. I never really thought-"

"It's alright," Bradley said. "I know. I love you."

Stephanie paused a good while.

"Care to go on a date?"

+++APRIL 13, 2012: OMAHA, NEBRASKA+++

Ted Phillips was going to broadcast his program again tomorrow. Uttering a melodramatic prayer to God for protection from demons before lying in bed, he fell into a drifting state of semi-sleep as he began to doze off. As had become common this past week, the Voice spoke. It was mellifluous and flattering as always, promising the rich rewards that he knew it would give him if he followed its instructions.

He remembered clearly how it had appeared to him, even drifting in half-somnolescence as he was. It had been the day after his latest program, excoriating that NYC singer (what the damn lesbian slut called herself he didn't care to remember). It had been a middling hit, and the Sunday after, the Voice had come to him. It had asked his name and he had gladly given the answer. The Voice had been pleased and continued speaking. It was the Lord of Gifts, and was going down from 'above and outside the world' as envoy for the coming of 'a greater and yet more glorious Lord, who will come as herald of glorious apocalypse and ending of days'. Nothing with that voice could be wicked or act agaianst God, he knew the instant it said those words.

Now the Voice said it would help spread his message across the US and start an army to fight for the return of this great Lord and topple the evil forces that lurked in Washington. Phillips knew for a fact those forces existed - how else could a goddamned African take over the White House, if not for Satan's help? The Voice said he would be rewarded for following its instructions - he would be praised, all would listen to him. The God-blessed United States would be restored to its ideal Christian form, returned to the great glory of the Founding Fathers - if he just listened to it, said what it told him to say, and followed his instructions whenever they were given. It was a fair enough deal, all things concerned.


	8. Chapter 8

+++VALINOR+++

New walls were rising fast around the camp where the army was gathering. Built of perfectly-cut snow-white marble, they reflected the swiftly descending Sun brilliantly like polished gold. Within the walls seven citadels were rising faster yet. Around the walls were lesser stockades, which were bristling with activity no less than the great fortress standing above them.

Three hundred thousand of the Eldar now formed up the host, which was growing by hundreds each day. The Noldor were still the overwhelming majority and many veterans from the old wars against Morgoth had rushed - uncannily so - back into armour for the final war due to be made. The Onodrim had after some deliberation decided to join the army, and the Eagles of Manwe stood perched on every pinnacle, cliff face and crag of the Encircling Mountains, prepared to aid in the fight in their domain. Servants of Orome and Tulkas had joined as well.

The Naugrim had been an unexpected development. The children of Aule, gone from Endor, seemed to have taken on new flesh and were building most of its arms and armour - as well as electing to join in the campaign against Morgoth.

Looking from the training-field to a west-looking tower, Ancalimon could only wonder if he was part of the force which would arrive to set foot on Endor. The greater part would go there across Belegaer at a time of the Vala Manwe's order, but a third would remain in Valinor to fend off the Black Enemy in their homeland. He hoped he would see Arda brought to its fulfillment. If the Men of Arda went outside the Music's foretelling, _changed_ that ordainment of the future - Morgoth could win. Morgoth would destroy all things and leave nothing but a barren waste of elemental matter and tortured void where his will alone dictated possibility - a hollow wasteland which would be destroyed and remade at the arbitrary whims of a deranged god.

He could not bear the thought of such. It was too horrible, too infinitely horrific, to even begin touching on in thought. And the Eldar would bear it more than any others.

+++UTUMNO, APRIL 15TH+++

Captain Ivanov looked down the cyclopean staircase and down into the abyssal darkness beyond. The camp had been expanded massively - a large collection of Abrams and T-72 tanks now pointed their gun barrels right into the shadows beyond. Machine-gun nests and sentry towers waited silently and patiently. Explosives surrounded the pillars of this hall, waiting on his word to collapse the whole damn place and seal this godforsaken underworld pit till the end of time itself. Last but not least, about 2,000 soldiers - good men from Russia, America, England - waited for an attack.

Ivanov felt something when he looked into the pit. Something long dead; a monster whose blazing reptilian flesh had been killed, but whose corrupted spirit had fled here into the deepest, darkest crypts of this underground hell to nurse its malice and strength and take on new, glorious and unholy life. There was a silence from below - a calm before a summer storm. But he knew that there were things here below, more terrible than the man-like creatures found in the higher levels, that were waiting to come out. He knew because when he looked into the blackness of that abyss, he _felt_ those things, their malice and cruelty oozing out to his mind until he turned his eyes away. They were in pits so deep all light failed to reach them, closer by far to the burning sea of fire miles underneath his feet than the surface of the Earth.

And they longed to rise.

+++SOUTHERN GERMANY, APRIL 17+++

The wolf population was growing faster than ever imagined. In the latest week alone it had increased by 300 percent according to statistics. Now that rapid, impossible growth was slowing, but still the amount of attacks was increasing. And there were stories spreading now - of solitary wolves attacking and killing bears. Other tales were spreading fast as well - of massive wolves, rhino-sized, and even larger creatures with flaming eyes and black coats of blood-matted fur.

Franz was a practical man and had not taken those stories seriously. But just Saturday, looking for a particularly nice stag to no effect, he'd come across a police car on its side, peeled open like a crab with the clawed and mangled body of an officer spilling out of the rent doors in a pool of human blood. Now he was going to try his luck against these wolves. The population needed control anyway.

A howl went from his right side. He fired, and hit a nearby branch as the startled animal ran off. More howls came in from every direction, the forest quickly filled with wolf-cries. Soft, padded footsteps circled round the clearing. Fiery eyes blazed out from the undergrowth and high branches. He was surrounded. Suddenly, before he could think of calling for help, a larger-than-normal wolf leapt out and grabbed at his leg. Screaming, he tried to fend it off, but it was strong and the grip of its jaw was iron.

Bleeding, disorientated and terrified, he saw the wolves now showing themselves clearly, red eyes gleaming with malevolence. In that moment he knew that such a joy as a quick death was most certainly not to be his.

The screaming continued all through the night and was heard by nearby villages all through the forest. When police investigated the next day all they found was a trail through the undergrowth, a churned-up patch of bare earth and what was left of a half-eaten human hand.

+++CENTRAL ASIA, APRIL 18 2012+++

They called him Hafizullah Ahmadzai, or to be short, "the Blackheart". A warlord on the ill-policed frontier between Afgahanistan and Uzbekistan, his men were fierce fighters with a 7-year dominion over a wide array of towns and villages. They gave him their women, their food, their medicines - if they did not, he and his men just took what they wanted. Now though, he had bigger ambitions.

Three days ago, a voice had come to him, appearing as a man-shaped creature of endlessly swirling sand, its eyes blazing with smokeless fire.

"I would offer a bargain from Melkor, the King of the World," it had said.

"What do you seek to offer?" he had snorted. "Who is this King to aid me?"

"The King is Giver of Freedom, He Who Arises in Might. If you follow his instructions, as I give them, He will aid you in battle. He will give you a kingdom greater than all others - He will give all gifts to you, even the women of the West as concubines, if you but join yourself with Him and do as He wills."

"Very well, I agree. But give me a sign by three days that he abides by his bargain."

"That will happen in two," the spirit replied, then crumbled away into the sand.

The following day, a freak sandstorm had led to a great victory against a rival warlord - his forces joined to the Blackheart's growing army - and the spirit's voice had said that such had been his doing.

So now they were prepared to conquer much more territory, drive out the filthy _kuffar_ Westerners, and begin to put the world under the feet of its King. So the spirit had promised, so would it be.


	9. Chapter 9

+++VALINOR+++

==THE HALLS OF MANDOS==

The manse before Indis, mother of the House of Finarfin, loomed on a bare hill, rocky and scrub-laden, made like a skull. Its gates were black and its doors were rarely opened. The Halls of Mandos did not accept visitors lightly. But still, she would not have rode from Tirion upon the hill of Tuna if she had not been willing to bear anything imaginable. Dismounting the steed and knocking on the gates, they opened silently and smoothly before her. She continued, walking on the marble path, looking over the gardens of beautiful roses - white, red, black - that stretched before her. Eventually she came to the door. Silently, it opened and she stepped into the darkness of the mansion itself.

The walls were brilliant porphyry, rose-red lanterns shining over black-veined violet marble hung with Vaire's tapestries - _worldsheets_ she had heard them called, and the name was not in jest.

In one, a great tower, a fortress fallen in the last of Endor's high years, a citadel of the Enemy's servant laid low by one whose resting-place was one of the only graves in Valinor, slid to destruction. Pinnacle upon cruel pinnacle fell down unstoppably to ruin; barracks crumbling down onto each other, towers sliding down like falling hills, battlements collapsing, torture-pits black with lamentation laid open, eyeless watchers shrieking mindlessly and gates like vast fanged mouths clenching shut forever as the structure fell onto itself in a ruin that seemed more a mountain collapsing than any tower falling. Despite the grand panorama, it was incomprehensibly detailed, as if she was looking into the actual event. She could see in the distance a mountain erupting with sudden fire, and it seemed that as she looked more and more detail revealed itself wherever her eyes found themselves, so that what seemed to be a mere rift in the mountain showed itself as a doorway with molten fire pouring out, and two halflings, their features perfectly portrayed, climbing upon a spur of rock as three eagles swept down in rescue, the western wind vanishing the last shreds of darkness and letting the golden-

-the worldsheet _rippled_, and out stepped a woman - very tall, her brilliant sun-gold hair done up neatly, wearing a red dress that covered her modestly. The way she walked and the brilliant - impossible to veil - gleam in her eyes told her name and her office - Vairë the Weaver, Valië and wife of Mandos.

"My apologies," Indis said, uncertain how to deal with this intrusion. "I did not-"

"That is no matter," said Mandos' wife. "I was looking from the Meneltarma, which is perished, upon the farmlands of Andunie before the Downfall, and from the pinnacle of Silvertine upon Lorien while its beauty had not yet been washed away by the years, and on countless other wonderful places."

"My position was undetermined until you saw me," she explained. "It is fortunate that you did, mother of Finarfin. What business do you have with my husband?"

Indis spoke.

"Let us see what his doom is," said the other, and led her through the mansion. It was far larger than last time Indis had gone here - but the mansion outside was still always the same. There were now many miles and miles of winding corridors spiralling inward to the days of the First Age and the wars fought then against the Enemy. Eventually they reached two doors to left and right, a central door between them.

"Not till the Doom comes will these doors ever be opened," said Indis, holding out her hands to either side of her. "One of the Children therein is a Man who could not leave for want of vengeance, and one is of the Eldar who is bound within until he fulfills his confinement. But we shall see what my husband says over this matter."

The central door opened into a cave. A window to the west let in light from the sun beginning its afternoon descent, and in the centre stood a grim black-haired man on an onyx throne that seemed grown out of the living rock.

"Speak," said the man on the throne. Holding his head in his hands he seemed greatly tired despite his seeming youth.

Indis made her petition.

"He will not go out until the Doom is come. But that is only a little while. Soon the sign of its coming will be seen and all Arda will know then that the Last Struggle is commenced. It is not right now, but it is soon. It will last long and be almost unbearable. More I cannot say."

"Look to the West," he finished, a tone of urgency creeping into his voice.

At that moment the sky started to scream.

==VALIMAR==

Away in Valimar the rest of many thousands was cut short by a torturous sound from the West. It was harsh, loud and grating beyond all measure. It tortured the ears - sounding like the wailing screech of some primordial monster, like music played out of harmony and creating cacophony beyond all measure, like- words cannot properly describe the sound. It was horror and fear and chaos and disharmony and confusion and pure _evil_ all at once.

Eyes turned to the west, all saw a _crack_ forming just above the Gates of Night - a wound in the world far larger than the one that had been there before - some of Varda's stars had even been swallowed, ripped apart and guttered out in the malevolent unlight that lurked behind the sky.

Then they realised what it had meant, and the fear only grew.

==THE WEST==

There was a Tree in this garden, beautiful and radiant. Its leaves reflected and magnified the sunlight above it and great winds blew in its leaves and its roots drank deep of great rivers and the good earth. Upon it were countless images of animals which lived, or had, in Endor and Valinor - the unicorn, the lion, the eagle, the deer and countless others in minute detail, so many that to reckon them was beyond any mortal lifetime. Under the tree, on a slab of rock, sat a woman dressed in a long green dress with gold hair that flew in the breezes and bare feet that pressed on the earth and bathed in the water.

Both the tree and the woman were Kementari, but they were not separate individuals. All the Valar did this to an extent - Manwe's power flew in the airs and with the thunder-clouds and the great birds, Ulmo's essence was in mountain streams and spring rains and deep dark currents under the sea, and Morgoth, most wretchedly of all, had set his malevolence inside all of Arda - save here.

Right now Kementari was examining a young fawn, killed but half an hour after the sky-wound and the wretched hateful noise of the world breaking. A tear ran down her face. It should not have been targeted by a predator - those that lived in Valinor killed only the very old, occasionally others when numbers reached excess - and such was not happening right now. Morgoth had done this. He had not made the killing blow, but by his will he had made it happen. Blood had been shed unjustly in Valinor after long years of peace. Morgoth was preparing his attack.

+++JUNE 17TH 2012+++

==INLAND CHINA==

The earthquake that came last night had been unexpected. The fault lines had been stable for years and nothing had been forecasted. Then it had struck in a rolling wave of torn-up earth and buildings. Dozens of villages had been obliterated, hundreds more had been devastated beyond recovery. For six hours the earth had torn itself apart then stopped.

That was not the last disaster that had struck. Wildfires had suddenly burst out in California and were sweeping towards Los Angeles with impossible speed. Hundreds of minor shocks had been reported across the planet as well. Sudden freak storms were breaking out, veering in wild trajectories that nevertheless seemed calculated to hurt civilians. Etna was extending feelers of smoke.

And of course what mattered the most was reported the least. A small but not-insignificant part of the northern hemisphere's skies had suddenly gone dark last night, nebulae, stars, galaxies disappearing and leaving just a patch of blackness in their wake. Other stars had immediately started blazing brighter in defiance to all laws of physics.

The world was breaking down. 


	10. Chapter 10

+++MAY 5TH 2012+++

The television blared into the living room, the powerful voice of Saul Ringman heard across the house. Tall, dark-haired and handsome, the young man kept on his firm, zealous and furious diatribes. A few weeks ago, he had started appearing on a minor televangelism show broadcast from Nebraska. The show's popularity (and ratings) had skyrocketed beyond all its competitors, and Ringman was definitely the reason.

The man's voice was addictive - everything it said seemed obviously, _naturally_ true. His _radical_ solutions for America's _problems _were _simple, easy and effective_. Most of all he knew where God's _enemies_ were. The men in Washington were secret Muslims bringing down the nation. The Illuminati were spreading their message through pop hits and blockbusters. The whole nation was irrevocably _tainted_, he said - it needed to be burnt down and rebuilt from the ground up as a _Christian_ state. What he said didn't involve logic or reason, he spoke to the gut.

And when he spoke the gut usually won out. His personality had overwhelmed the televangelist whose name adorned the show's opening titles and he was becoming fast fixed in public awareness. Now he said he was soon going to tour America and begin speaking at rallies. He was going to become the very public face of a new Christian movement which he said would blow everything else out of the water.

Words more true had not been spoken.

+++NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN+++

The Blackheart left his fighters to celebrate over their latest victory as the Sun rose over the valley and the burning village below. A sizeable town, it had fallen at sunset yesterday. His lieutenants and fighting men were still allotting their shares of women and plunder taken from the ruins - the most were of course his. From this vantage point he could see south and west, vast territories yet remaining for the taking. Suddenly, a cluster of sand blew towards him and shaped itself into the form of a man, a wicked grin on its face.

"It is good that you do this," the man of sand said. "But you must go on faster. Drive out the _kuffar_ from this land and the King of All The Earth shall aid you in conquest after conquest, until you rule from the waters of Indus to the heights of Jerusalem. Slacken, and you will feel His whip upon your wretched back!"

"Yes, _djinn_ of the sand," the Blackheart replied. "But I could not defeat the _kuffar_ dogs unless I had a much greater army."

"Doubt you the King of the Earth?" replied the sand-figure. "He has countless servants under Him. Fight against the _kuffar_ and they will assist you, for the King of the Earth likes what he sees in you. But do not, and they will shred your flesh and deliver your petty soul to the malice of His gaze!"

The Blackheart shuddered noticeably.

"Then, o _djinn_ of the sand, I will drive out the _kuffar_; slay their warriors, take their women, slaughter their children like sheep. But tell me what I must do to defeat their fortresses."

The spirit of sand spoke.

==THE NEXT DAY==

The sun was beating down upon the Coalition base when the Blackheart made his assault. He had one-hundred and sixty-nine Pashtun fighting men under him - far less than the _kuffar _host and very oddly specific. But the _djinn's_ instructions had been adamant. They were to attack the main gate at noon in a direct assault. It seemed suicide, but the _djinn_ had demanded it. They were allowed to kill and plunder and rape to their hearts' content after they had won - such was the _djinn_'s promised reward.

As they charged, Kalshnikovs screaming, it seemed as if a fist made of air rose up and smashed right into the gate. The sentry towers buckled and fell, the gate and the fence itself exploded inward and the soldiers nearby were destroyed and scattered by the wind. The rest seemed trapped in a kind of primal fear, unable to do more than whimper and soil themselves. They were cut down like wheat. It seemed that their Kalashnikovs never ran out as they continued the charge, screaming and slaying. _Kuffar_ died all around - the Blackheart dimly saw out of the corner of his eye vicious jackals shredding men alive, larger and far more predatory than usual.

The _kuffar_ had gathered around their flagpole, their symbol, but they were clearly outnumbered - not only by Pashtuns, but also by those jackals and odd, semi-transparent shadowy figures that seemed to stand around them, dim glimpses of skeletal jaws and dead eyes in the corner of the eye, clutching semi-material and wicked-looking rifles. There were about 300 in all _kuffar_ present - helpless and doomed to lose a fight.

The Blackheart laughed heartily and spoke.

"Surrender to me and you will be allowed to live," he said grinning. "Do not and..."

He double-tapped his rifle and a young man fell lifeless.

"...You will die."

Before long the hated servants of the Great Satan were whimpering on their knees. The Blackheart noted with a grin that some were female, soon to be put to a better use than whatever reason the Great Satan had for their presence here.

As the sable banner of the Blackheart replaced the Stars & Stripes, the spirit appeared in the way it usually did, rising out of the dust and sand.

"The Great King of the Earth will send you his great lieutenant to assist you in but a few months," the thing laughed. "With him at your side, none shall stand in your way."

==NAPLES, ITALY==

Stefanie Delacroix was an exchange student from France, studying astronomy. So why was she dreaming of fires beneath the city? Idly, almost automatically, her hand was writing in the dream diary she'd been keeping for months.

_He under the mountain. Dreams. Waking up. He will rise._

_We will burn._

_Fire. From below. Man of fire. Sleeps, old wounds. Battles long ago. A glittering host. Shields shining like starlight. Swords biting. Spears wounding._

_Creeps below. Goes to sleep. Waking up. _

_She. Great Whore, Mother-Monster. Echidna on land, Tiamat in water. Abominations of the Earth: Chimera, Cerberus, Hydra, _worse_._

_She tortures them along with shining man. _Alters_ them, beautiful once, ugly now. Abomination, horror, bogeyman. Orc._

_"And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration."_

_More things. Their words are poison and their breath is fire. Lizards (serpents?), winged, fiery, flying. Dragon._

_Man goes into cave - no, not man. Laughs and grins as he fights, gold hair shining like fire in the sunlight. She cannot face him. Is wounded, flees naked into wilderness, far to east. Waits for time to strike._

_Coming soon._

_A sky with a black sun and a bloody moon. Look, hoping to see something (what is it, what star will fall from heaven to mark the Doom?) but it is nowhere._

_"And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?"_

_Leave. Go North. This city is stumbling to its destruction. You will be guided._

Stefanie blinked and looked at the page again. She had written that? What did it mean? Who could interpret this properly? She ripped the page from the diary and put it into her breast pocket. This was certainly far more than the random whims of her subconscious.

As soon as the summer holidays began, she was heading as far way from here as she could.

+++MAY 25TH, NEW YORK+++

The city was under a pall of malice. There were lots of disasters taking place and many cities had been heavily damaged, but not here. But still this place seemed to be under a shadow of fear and uncertainty. There were lots of bad things happening with the people, encouraged not least by the black hole in the sky that had appeared recently. People were scared of that thing, not just because of the abstract horror it suggested - that the very cosmos was altering somehow - but also because the darkness that seemed to pulse, to seethe, to _live_ in that gap - visible even in daytime, a blot on the sky always present - was sadistic, vile, almost pure _evil_. To live happily under that oppressive malevolent _fault_ in the world was impossible - some few loners, mostly anti-social teenagers and depressive types, claimed the thing was talking to them, urging them to either run around committing crimes or commit suicide.

The warlord gathering steam in Afghanistan was also a concern. He had taken to assaulting Coalition bases right now and was awfully good at it. Obama seemed to be wringing his hands about the situation there and this was worsening the situation. Men based in Afghanistan had killed thousands of citizens after all.

And last night there'd been major riots throughout the city. Hundreds had died as hordes of blood-maddened lunatics had gone hunting to kill or assault anybody in their path. Many had claimed the voice behind that gap in the sky had ordered them to do it, rape and kill and tear and _eat_ until the cops had beaten them senseless and they had woken up, awfully aware of the last night's horrors done by _their_ perfectly willing hands.

Saul Ringman, the televangelist, was preparing to put on a rally tomorrow on Saturday. He had talked of restoring order and making the city safe, but it was clear that it was on a knife edge. His impending presence - as a famous big-C Conservative anti-everything ideologue - was putting the city on a knife's edge. New York would live or die by what happened tomorrow, everybody was sure. 


	11. Chapter 11

+++MAY 5TH 2012+++

The television blared into the living room, the powerful voice of Saul Ringman heard across the house. Tall, dark-haired and handsome, the young man kept on his firm, zealous and furious diatribes. A few weeks ago, he had started appearing on a minor televangelism show broadcast from Nebraska. The show's popularity (and ratings) had skyrocketed beyond all its competitors, and Ringman was definitely the reason.

The man's voice was addictive - everything it said seemed obviously, _naturally_ true. His _radical_ solutions for America's _problems _were _simple, easy and effective_. Most of all he knew where God's _enemies_ were. The men in Washington were secret Muslims bringing down the nation. The Illuminati were spreading their message through pop hits and blockbusters. The whole nation was irrevocably _tainted_, he said - it needed to be burnt down and rebuilt from the ground up as a _Christian_ state. What he said didn't involve logic or reason, he spoke to the gut.

And when he spoke the gut usually won out. His personality had overwhelmed the televangelist whose name adorned the show's opening titles and he was becoming fast fixed in public awareness. Now he said he was soon going to tour America and begin speaking at rallies. He was going to become the very public face of a new Christian movement which he said would blow everything else out of the water.

Words more true had not been spoken.

+++NORTHERN AFGHANISTAN+++

The Blackheart left his fighters to celebrate over their latest victory as the Sun rose over the valley and the burning village below. A sizeable town, it had fallen at sunset yesterday. His lieutenants and fighting men were still allotting their shares of women and plunder taken from the ruins - the most were of course his. From this vantage point he could see south and west, vast territories yet remaining for the taking. Suddenly, a cluster of sand blew towards him and shaped itself into the form of a man, a wicked grin on its face.

"It is good that you do this," the man of sand said. "But you must go on faster. Drive out the _kuffar_ from this land and the King of All The Earth shall aid you in conquest after conquest, until you rule from the waters of Indus to the heights of Jerusalem. Slacken, and you will feel His whip upon your wretched back!"

"Yes, _djinn_ of the sand," the Blackheart replied. "But I could not defeat the _kuffar_ dogs unless I had a much greater army."

"Doubt you the King of the Earth?" replied the sand-figure. "He has countless servants under Him. Fight against the _kuffar_ and they will assist you, for the King of the Earth likes what he sees in you. But do not, and they will shred your flesh and deliver your petty soul to the malice of His gaze!"

The Blackheart shuddered noticeably.

"Then, o _djinn_ of the sand, I will drive out the _kuffar_; slay their warriors, take their women, slaughter their children like sheep. But tell me what I must do to defeat their fortresses."

The spirit of sand spoke.

==THE NEXT DAY==

The sun was beating down upon the Coalition base when the Blackheart made his assault. He had one-hundred and sixty-nine Pashtun fighting men under him - far less than the _kuffar _host and very oddly specific. But the _djinn's_ instructions had been adamant. They were to attack the main gate at noon in a direct assault. It seemed suicide, but the _djinn_ had demanded it. They were allowed to kill and plunder and rape to their hearts' content after they had won - such was the _djinn_'s promised reward.

As they charged, Kalshnikovs screaming, it seemed as if a fist made of air rose up and smashed right into the gate. The sentry towers buckled and fell, the gate and the fence itself exploded inward and the soldiers nearby were destroyed and scattered by the wind. The rest seemed trapped in a kind of primal fear, unable to do more than whimper and soil themselves. They were cut down like wheat. It seemed that their Kalashnikovs never ran out as they continued the charge, screaming and slaying. _Kuffar_ died all around - the Blackheart dimly saw out of the corner of his eye vicious jackals shredding men alive, larger and far more predatory than usual.

The _kuffar_ had gathered around their flagpole, their symbol, but they were clearly outnumbered - not only by Pashtuns, but also by those jackals and odd, semi-transparent shadowy figures that seemed to stand around them, dim glimpses of skeletal jaws and dead eyes in the corner of the eye, clutching semi-material and wicked-looking rifles. There were about 300 in all _kuffar_ present - helpless and doomed to lose a fight.

The Blackheart laughed heartily and spoke.

"Surrender to me and you will be allowed to live," he said grinning. "Do not and..."

He double-tapped his rifle and a young man fell lifeless.

"...You will die."

Before long the hated servants of the Great Satan were whimpering on their knees. The Blackheart noted with a grin that some were female, soon to be put to a better use than whatever reason the Great Satan had for their presence here.

As the sable banner of the Blackheart replaced the Stars & Stripes, the spirit appeared in the way it usually did, rising out of the dust and sand.

"The Great King of the Earth will send you his great lieutenant to assist you in but a few months," the thing laughed. "With him at your side, none shall stand in your way."

==NAPLES, ITALY==

Stefanie Delacroix was an exchange student from France, studying astronomy. So why was she dreaming of fires beneath the city? Idly, almost automatically, her hand was writing in the dream diary she'd been keeping for months.

_He under the mountain. Dreams. Waking up. He will rise._

_We will burn._

_Fire. From below. Man of fire. Sleeps, old wounds. Battles long ago. A glittering host. Shields shining like starlight. Swords biting. Spears wounding._

_Creeps below. Goes to sleep. Waking up. _

_She. Great Whore, Mother-Monster. Echidna on land, Tiamat in water. Abominations of the Earth: Chimera, Cerberus, Hydra, _worse_._

_She tortures them along with shining man. _Alters_ them, beautiful once, ugly now. Abomination, horror, bogeyman. Orc._

_"And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration."_

_More things. Their words are poison and their breath is fire. Lizards (serpents?), winged, fiery, flying. Dragon._

_Man goes into cave - no, not man. Laughs and grins as he fights, gold hair shining like fire in the sunlight. She cannot face him. Is wounded, flees naked into wilderness, far to east. Waits for time to strike._

_Coming soon._

_A sky with a black sun and a bloody moon. Look, hoping to see something (what is it, what star will fall from heaven to mark the Doom?) but it is nowhere._

_"And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?"_

_Leave. Go North. This city is stumbling to its destruction. You will be guided._

Stefanie blinked and looked at the page again. She had written that? What did it mean? Who could interpret this properly? She ripped the page from the diary and put it into her breast pocket. This was certainly far more than the random whims of her subconscious.

As soon as the summer holidays began, she was heading as far way from here as she could.

+++MAY 25TH, NEW YORK+++

The city was under a pall of malice. There were lots of disasters taking place and many cities had been heavily damaged, but not here. But still this place seemed to be under a shadow of fear and uncertainty. There were lots of bad things happening with the people, encouraged not least by the black hole in the sky that had appeared recently. People were scared of that thing, not just because of the abstract horror it suggested - that the very cosmos was altering somehow - but also because the darkness that seemed to pulse, to seethe, to _live_ in that gap - visible even in daytime, a blot on the sky always present - was sadistic, vile, almost pure _evil_. To live happily under that oppressive malevolent _fault_ in the world was impossible - some few loners, mostly anti-social teenagers and depressive types, claimed the thing was talking to them, urging them to either run around committing crimes or commit suicide.

The warlord gathering steam in Afghanistan was also a concern. He had taken to assaulting Coalition bases right now and was awfully good at it. Obama seemed to be wringing his hands about the situation there and this was worsening the situation. Men based in Afghanistan had killed thousands of citizens after all.

And last night there'd been major riots throughout the city. Hundreds had died as hordes of blood-maddened lunatics had gone hunting to kill or assault anybody in their path. Many had claimed the voice behind that gap in the sky had ordered them to do it, rape and kill and tear and _eat_ until the cops had beaten them senseless and they had woken up, awfully aware of the last night's horrors done by _their_ perfectly willing hands.

Saul Ringman, the televangelist, was preparing to put on a rally tomorrow on Saturday. He had talked of restoring order and making the city safe, but it was clear that it was on a knife edge. His impending presence - as a famous big-C Conservative anti-everything ideologue - was putting the city on a knife's edge. New York would live or die by what happened tomorrow, everybody was sure. 


	12. Chapter 12

+++MAY 26TH, NEW YORK CITY+++

It was no surprise the rally was at night - such shows the being who now called himself Ringman had put on very often far in the past. The stadium was packed with countless people. They had jam-packed the seats and swarmed across the grass of the playing field itself, surrounding the stage on which the man himself stood, his voice ringing out across the whole stadium without a microphone. The building itself was dark, the obsidian sky above seemingly devoid of stars. Torches cast their blazing, infernal light across the scene, reddening the people's faces as if they were caught in some vast immeasurable smoking oven as they chanted, possessed by some manic devilry that flowed from his unnaturally-amplified voice.

Not that this was the only audience. Across America, 8 million people were watching Saul Ringman live on TV (twice that number listening to him live on radio) and more were tuning in every second. In their vision, he seemed to grow until he was the only object visible, his voice the only sound audible over the background chanting and ecstatic, almost worshipful yells of hatred.

Above, Sergeant Bradley adjusted his beret. His sword Orcrist was already unsheathed, gleaming bright and ready to shed blood. Stephanie stood next to him with her own blade, fingering the crucifix she wore nervously.

"You ready?" Bradley asked.

"Yeah," Stephanie replied, kissing him deeply.

The others gave their assent.

"Bring us in," Bradley ordered.

The plan was based on a key factor - the hope that Ringman would dominate his audience's perceptions too heavily and allow himself - or the body he had conjured up - to be destroyed without his sops knowing. Fortunately that seemed to be what he was doing.

The helicopter dropped the two men (and one woman) off without any but Ringman himself knowing.

Bradley and Stephanie rushed into battle, ancestral war-cries flying from their lips, memories of - war, thousands of men great and noble and terrible and filled with wrath facing a wicked figure armoured in dark iron under a fire-crowned mountain-a prince fighting with a broken sword over his father's corpse-a rally like this but far larger, hundreds of thousands yelling cries of praise to Melkor, "Lord of the World"-a temple of wickedness, its silver dome tarnished with the smoke of burned women and children, a handsome man like the one they fought now laughing at lightning that seemed to writhe and live as it struck against him - the handsome televangelist picked them up like children, holding each single-handedly by their necks.

Bradley tried - struggled - to breath, thick fingers trying to rush his throat, his own will adding to the meagre strength of his body to withstand, locked in spiritual battle like a flame of pure whiteness struggling to withstand a great wind of darkness.

"Come on...Kurtz..." he said, every breath a struggle. "Shoot, damn you!"

A few metres away the blond German drew his pistol. The Desert Eagle pistol in his hand was a weapon like any other produced in a factory somewhere. Steadying his aim, moving his finger ever so slightly - a massive difficulty in the immense immaterial weight that seemed to be forcing him down so greatly, trying to drag him to the floor and crush out his life and choke him and destroy him - he pulled the trigger.

But it was no mere explosive reaction that drew the bullet from its trigger on its ordained course, but a fire, an outburst of pure _will_ that burned through his soul. Were it not so, the shot would probably have bounced off against the flesh of the demagogue's body and achieved nothing.

A sound like thunder went out across the stadium. Ringman's hands went loose - the man himself stumbled, faltered. Blood or something like it went out from his gut. Stephanie wasted no time. The Flame of the West flashed like fire and pierced Sauron's heart. The body fell to its knees.

Bradley raised his blade and decapitated him.

The flesh so recently destroyed began to crumble, smoking ash and glowing embers shedding off from what in seconds became a smoking ruin of a body, in instants a statue long-crumbled and disintegrating fast, then moments later a cloud of fiery smoke that rose high and rushed far eastward until it disappeared from view.

+++EVENING, THE DAY AFTER, CAMP ALPHA+++

Bradley had just left marksmanship practice and was preparing to lie down in his room. The place was immaculately clean and had only a few personal effect, one of which was a family photo from when as a kid of about 12 his parents had taken him on a trip to south California. Papa had loved the sea so much and insisted he take Mom on a yacht he'd rented - Bradley hadn't been able to come himself (despite his fervent protests) because he'd been sick and was due to come back home to Dallas in about two days' time.

There had been an accident. A freak storm. Both had died and Bradley had ended up with his grandpa. He had cried so much when he heard they were dead. The photo was pretty much the last time he had ever been with his parents. 13 years on he still looked at it sometimes to remember them.

His reverie of painful memories (mercifully dampened by time) was cut thankfully short by three knocks on the door.

He opened it.

Stephanie was there in a cute little number, a lovely red dress that she filled out wonderfully, almost as if it had been fitted out solely for her and nobody else, the crucifix she kept around her neck dangling in her low-cut cleavage. She walked in and locked the door as Bradley looked at her appreciatively.

"I've been thinking on what we both want," she said, her voice turning somewhat sultry. "And making out, you know, it just doesn't cut it any more. So, how about we take it to the next level, ya know, spend some time..._together._"

That voice probably counted as enough invitation by itself.

"Sure," Bradley said, his Texan accent very noticeable.

She began languidly unbuttoning his shirt.

+++UNKNOWN+++

The spirit drifted on the desert winds with purpose. It had enough power to recreate a fair-looking body in some months' time, but its failure in America had frustrated its master's goals immensely. It had been _so close!_ One more hour and it would have been gone from that stadium to travel in so many new rallies, spreading discontent and hatred across that wretched Aftercomer country. But those..._wretches_ had ruined the scheme, forced it to retreat. It would not be allowed to manifest there again - they would certainly be on guard next time.

So where? It had sensed the presence of two other spirits kin to it - one who in the Music had sung of sandstorms blotting out the sun, parched wastelands of cracked mud without a drop of water, omnipresent heat and scorched wastelands without life under an unrelenting sky - and _another_, a presence it had not sensed since the Breaking of Thangorodrim. _She_ had helped in the creation of innumerable monsters for the use of Melkor - greatest of all the terror Ancalagon whose breath had burned hotter than Arien's flame, whose wings had blotted out the sky over all Anfauglith and whose body had crushed the mountains of Thangorodrim under its weight.

If he could join with her in alliance, as they had long Ages ago, the forces of Melkor would be great and terrible indeed.


	13. Chapter 13

+++VALINOR+++

The trees of Lorien were memorable indeed. They were like proud oaks tall and strong with great trunks and glistening gold bark, and their silver leaves did not block light but reflected and refracted it so that even in midnight there was sufficient illumination to easily find one's way. Around them in the garden were great bushes and ferns on which the morning dew shone like the stars of Varda, larger than any that could be found on Endor. The trees bore fruit in all seasons which never went overripe or grew bad, and the fruit of the trees was a balm to any afflicted spirit; but also a curse to any who would take them for selfish gain, for only evil could come of that.

Upon the ground diamonds and rubies and nuggets of gold and shining silver lay like common pebbles, but one would not think to disturb them, never mind to take them from what seemed such a perfect garden.

Silvery mists flowed through the forest, and the wind in the trees produced music like the soft tinkling of a thousand bells at once. Sweet waters flowed in streams and brooks, or pooled in small lakes; and the music of the flowing water added to the music of the trees, both increasing the splendour of the other; so that with the two in harmony the soul was soothed and even the most burdened heart could find comfort.

Eventually all the flowing waters found rest in a central lake surrounded by trees. The lake was like a crystal mirror which could never be disturbed, in which even the most forcefully thrown boulder would not leave the slightest ripple. In this lake the dreams of all Arda were born - in this lake all hopes and dreams for the future rested, in this lake all good dreams and great passions were born from its infinite depths. All hope, all joy, all rest - all came from this place and ultimately from Illuvatar.

On an island in the centre what looked like a young man and woman lay asleep in the knot of a tree greater than all the others, whose scent put a drowsiness in motion that made it easy to sleep - and after sleeping in its shadow one was always refreshed, healed of old wounds and scars and the memory of past torments.

One would not easily suppose that the lake, the man and the tree were all one and the same - Irmo the Vala. His spouse Este slept beside him, hands held with her husband.

Ancalimon had left the fortress being built to the east on special dispensation and would return soon to the war that would be begun on Morgoth. Resting on a mat of leaves and rushes which was bearing him across the clear waters to the island, he let the forest sink into him and cool his soul until it laid down on the island's shore.

Gingerly he set his feet down on the pearl sands - like the beaches of Eldamar but in miniature, each grain of sand was a single brilliant pearl - and walked towards the tree. In a hollow some water had pooled, and it was like molten silver. He glanced briefly in the pool. In it was displayed the face of his soulmate - of the one his heart would be bonded to in marriage and ever after belong to completely.

It was a youthful face, with golden hair and features so beautiful it almost stunned him to behold. It seemed carefree and innocent beyond measure, wishing no malevolence to anything. It had certainly never known evil or wickedness, not even in stories such as the ones he had been told in his youth.

He knew certainly that whoever possessed that face would not be born in Valinor - the rate of births had slowed to a crawl over the long Ages, the last handful were certainly taking place soon or even now. But how? After the Doom and the undoing of Arda, what would be left of the Eldar? How could it-

He looked to his right and a figure shining with light stood at his side. His face was gentle and happy to be here, glad and filled with good humour. One of the Holy Ones, to be sure.

"Who are you, O Holy One in the Eyes of Illuvatar?" Ancalimon asked. "For I do not know your name."

"Name?" the Maia said in answer. "I have used many in the past. In the Third Age of the Sun I was called Gandalf to Men, Mithrandir to Elves, Tharkun to the Dwarves. From the Fifth Age thereon, in Endor I have been called Raphael - for some times I have been abroad there on the instruction of Illuvatar. There also they have called my kin many names - Manwë they have called Michael, many others have been deluded about the Powers and worshipped them as gods in their own right. But Olorin will do for just now."

"So, Olorin, what is the meaning of that which I see before me?"

"To Illuvatar only is given the authority to open the seal upon the scroll of the future. We of the Ainur were given only the faintest scraps of what would come after the Third Age. You should trust in Him to see that things work out for the best - hold faith in His power and benevolence, have hope for the future and keep in mind that He knows better than you in many things."

"Thank you, Master Olorin."

"It has been a pleasure. Now, should you not be back preparing for the Battle to come?"

+++CAMP ALPHA, MAY 28 MORNING+++

Bradley woke up well-rested. Stephanie had already left, presumably to shower and put on the military clothes she ought to be wearing today. The red dress she'd been wearing that evening (until he'd divested her of it, along with her bra and panties) was also gone, presumably it was wherever she kept it. By the nightstand she'd left a note.

Thaddeus Bradley,

I never realised how much I loved you until tonight.

You are the light of my life and I will never leave you ever. You have claimed me forever as yours. You have amazed me beyond my wildest dreams and I cannot say any other man has marked me so much as you have tonight. I am yours forever.

Do you feel the same?

If you do, I would like to meet you at dinner tomorrow in the Prancing Pony

Stephanie Danvers

Bradley could not voice any objection. He had been with women more than a few times before Steph, but those had been one night stands or short flings, brief outbursts of passion that quickly burned themselves out and guttered away, forgotten. With her, he felt this incredible connection, this perfect union, almost at the level of their own souls. She was more than pretty or attractive - she was _beautiful_.

He found a pen and scrawled below his answer to her challenge: **_yes_**.

The following day was routine - swordsmanship practice, marksmanship training. martial arts sparring and bouts of recreation at the on-site leisure centre. By evening he went to the Prancing Pony - a local village pub which claimed to be descended from a Medieval tavern and before that an Anglo-Saxon feasthall, both of the same name and location - also known as the place where he and Stephanie had spoken to each other after the battle underground where she had claimed Anduril.

He easily found her (in a sky-blue dress this time) and showed her his message, the answer to her question, her challenge to him that he loved her.

"Bradley...uh, wow," she said. "I can't imagine - is it real? Do you truly love me?"

"Yes," he replied, the answer he gave so natural he barely noticed it. "Yes, my love."

She took his head in her hands and softly, sweetly kissed him on the mouth.

Love was all that existed for them in that moment.


End file.
